Rusted Moss is an exploration traversal game where you swing your way to finding a balance between human and fae realms. You play by shooting and grappling your way through witches and rusted machine enemies. It stands out from other Metroidvania games with its physics-based grapple hook and instinctive shooting mechanics.

You play Fern, caught up in an endless war between humankind and fae-folk. The Age of Men has stretched beyond its natural cycle and you have been secretly placed with human parents to break the cycle and uncover the truths of humans, changelings, and fae. With your companion Puck, you travel through desolate landscapes and discover the remnants of humanity's rusting iron inventions.

At first, you only have a single gun but gain more as you progress. Movement is controlled by one stick while aiming is controlled by the other in the classic twin-stick style. This combines with the grapple ability to enable you to aim and explore in any direction. It takes a while to get to grips with this complexity, but once it clicked you feel in complete control and can come up with creative solutions to the traversal challenges and precise shooting.

It's a retro pixelated world but one that uses real physics modelling to determine your movement and momentum. This leans into those nuanced controls to allow your elastic grappling to add a real sense of locomotion to proceedings. Like rock climbing, there’s no set path through this melancholic abandoned wasteland, you can simply latch onto any moss-covered structure.

The result is a game with a surprisingly deep story (that takes real attention to follow). The star of the show is the movement and shooting though. This is a really challenging game where you need patience and trial and error.